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VR/AR = "Embodied Data" - Reminded me of my desire to explore my allergies and cancer in my family. Effects of Migration.

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VR/AR = "Embodied Data" - Reminded me of my desire to explore my allergies and cancer in my family. Effects of Migration.

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https://www.karger.com/Article/Fulltext/494129 - Effects of Migration on Allergic Diseases

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Learned the Viet Proverb: Uống nước nhớ nguồn.

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Learned the Viet Proverb: Uống nước nhớ nguồn.

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Drink the Water, Remember the Source

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"KEEPING ONE'S LANGUAGE WHEN YOU'RE NOT IN YOUR HOMELAND IS LIKE A DANCE"

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Childhood growing up with Club Penguin and Webkinz

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Childhood growing up with Club Penguin and Webkinz

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Learned Vietnamese for four hours a day everyday for 8 weeks for Summer 2021 with UW-Madison

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Learned Vietnamese for four hours a day everyday for 8 weeks for Summer 2021 with UW-Madison

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Noticed the many Viet Altars in Viet restaurants & stores in Portland

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Noticed the many Viet Altars in Viet restaurants & stores in Portland

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FOLLOW UP INTERVIEW WITH A PERSON WHO GAVE AN ALTAR OFFERING 

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FOLLOW UP INTERVIEW WITH A PERSON WHO GAVE AN ALTAR OFFERING 

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The meaning of an altar changes thru generations sacred/private/household - collective/shared/connect - personal/dream/safety/sanctuary

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Dogs bring good luck, cats bring bad luck

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Dogs bring good luck, cats bring bad luck

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1st day of the year = complete rest, no chores

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1st day of the year = complete rest, no chores

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YEAR OF THE OX, GRANDMA SUGGESTING WHEN TO HAVE BABIES BASED ON YEAR

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YEAR OF THE OX, GRANDMA SUGGESTING WHEN TO HAVE BABIES BASED ON YEAR

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White is worn for Vietnamese funerals and grieving rituals

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Wasn't allowed to have actual or pictures or stuffed animals of Turtles growing up

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Wasn't allowed to have actual or pictures or stuffed animals of Turtles growing up

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Turtle = slow life = bad

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Read "A Bestiary Book by Lily K. Hoang" - Thought about how I was raised on religion, superstition, folk lore, ritual (2018)

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Read "A Bestiary Book by Lily K. Hoang" - Thought about how I was raised on religion, superstition, folk lore, ritual (2018)

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Curated a public altar for BIPOC grief (Spring 2021)

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Curated a public altar for BIPOC grief (Spring 2021)

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Human-Friendly Technology: Using & Designing Healthier Tech By Alex Wolf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoOWj__78nM

DIGITAL GHOSTS

Memory Work
https://memory-work.com/

Memory Place
https://www.zeynepmadethis.com/works/memory-place

Leymusoom Digital Shrine, by Heesoo Leymusoom Kwon
https://newart.city/show/leymusoom-digital-shrine

alice yuan zhang AR piece of Remembering Our Roots, an ancestral ecologies project
https://www.instagram.com/p/CV3Hkk1PqL7/

🌿 Tend to Your Digital Gardens: Flowers, Weeds, and All
https://newpublic.substack.com/p/-tend-to-your-digital-gardens-flowers

2020 UCLA DMA MFA thesis exhibition NEARREST NEIGHBOR
ZEYNEP ABES Memory Place
https://near.rest/zeynep-abes

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︎

As our world continues to transform through 2021 and beyond, how should virtual care lab persist as a meeting place for what is most resonant and necessary moving forward?

WE ARE CURRENTLY UNDERGOING A PERIOD OF COLLECTIVE FERMENTATION ︎︎︎ open sessions ︎ + working doc ︎

July 11 | What have we learned in our experimental collaborations so far?
July 25 | Who are we in relation to each other?
August 8 | What would we like to develop a deeper study into?
August 22 | What do we need in order to do this?

Read on for some reflections from our gatherings, projects, dialogues, lab hours, and various experiments in the past year. See our archive for more documentation.

Kristen Mitchell "For me, VCL works as a practical space for contribution and community. It seems to offer a receptacle for action and thought that generate their own swing...maybe this is reciprocity?"

"It always takes the form of the people coming, adding, receiving and going and adjusts to their attitudes very elegantly. So much so that I am uncertain of what is holding it together."

"With the virtual space certain things are flattened and so other things take their place and re-create a 3 dimensionality."

"Once you start divesting from more dominant systems and the realities they produce, it is a relief to find living alternatives of any size. As adrienne maree brown tee'd up for us, scale doesn't matter."

Elenie Chung "VCL goes through constant metamorphosis and experimentation - groups became archived, new groups were formed and I think what really worked for me is this lack of expectation or commitment for both parties-the host and the participant."

Illustration by Wandy Cheng

José Miguel Galán Najarro
"Despite the barriers, we continue to communicate via postal mail, text, and images of written text. A pesar de las barreras, nos continuamos comunicando a traves de correo postal, texts, e imágenes de texto escrito."

"Y el portal continúa. / And the portal continues."

Daniela Hernández Chong Cuy
"Virtual Care Lab is overlapping and continuing ways of communication that occur in space and virtual ether. Virtual Care lab has taught me new, expansive ways of advocating, communicating and caring for those that I represent, and has shown me the immense value of interdisciplinary collaboration, including law and art."

Kenny Zhao
"Virtual Care Lab is the sense of care and understanding I've cultivated with real individuals, many of whom I've never met in person. I've filled notebooks with reflections, insights, and 'vibey turns of phrase' from this past year, nearly all of them either inspired or encouraged by my experiences with VCL. But the ideas alone would lose their hold if it weren't for the ongoing support, encouragement, and curiosity I feel whenever I connect with the VCL community"

Vera Grimmer
"Taking care means paying attention"

Aden Solway "Like love, this work we have done together asks of us to practice many things: ongoing care, open communication and above all else, a commitment to address and engage the needs of others through reciprocal exchange."

"I have learned a great deal from all of our community members - be it about the shortcomings and liberties of technology as a tool for social gathering, the persistence of human and nonhuman life during a period of tumult (or even disaster) and the power of collective mobilization."

Figure 1: Mushroom spores as seen through an electron microscope

Brendan Thompson

Ari Simon

"Here I witnessed a community of people who are incredibly intentional and politically responsive with their use of the digital. I loved being part of conversations really grappling with digital ethics, sharing best practices, and seeking healthier relationships to/with the virtual From this, I recognized another way to conceptualize Virtual Care Lab I hadn't seen at the beginning. Beyond 'care' as the subject that needed to be done 'virtually', I realized VCL is most fascinating to me with 'virtual' as the subject, and 'care' as a deeply necessary and long-omitted quality of the virtual."

︎
Email us at virtualcarelab [at] gmail.com if you'd like to contribute thoughts on the past year with us.

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︎ As our world continues to transform through 2021 and beyond, how should virtual care lab persist as a meeting place for what is most resonant and necessary moving forward? July 11 | What have we learned in our experimental collaborations so far? July 25 | Who are we in relation to each other?

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Animal Crossing New Horizons (2020-Present)

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Animal Crossing New Horizons (2020-Present)

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https://www.twitch.tv/digitalaltar

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💖 By LP 💖 Exploring Digital Altars 💖 Check my archive of videos on my Youtube (click on the right link) 💖

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Wrote "Finding Answers to the Role of Cameras in Achieving Justice for People of Color: A Literature Review on Bystanders and Police Officers in Police Violence with Cameras" (2019)

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Wrote "Finding Answers to the Role of Cameras in Achieving Justice for People of Color: A Literature Review on Bystanders and Police Officers in Police Violence with Cameras" (2019)

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THE ROLE OF THE CAMERA

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Explored Creative Collective Processing of Emotions and Memories in East Oakland for a UC Berk Ethnic Studies PHD Student (Summer 2020)

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Explored Creative Collective Processing of Emotions and Memories in East Oakland for a UC Berk Ethnic Studies PHD Student (Summer 2020)

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RIP T-shirts = Collective Memory ; Video = Control Narrative

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100 Page Thesis on Feminism and Instagram in Asian America at Reed College (2020)

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100 Page Thesis on Feminism and Instagram in Asian America at Reed College (2020)

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anger as an emergence tool and an act of resistance -

philosopher Alison Jaggar’s term, “outlaw emotions,” which explains that emotions like anger at

racial discrimination can be a tool to understand systematic oppression - social media and emotion are tools to gain

“cultural citizenship" - ““automediation,” “augmented revolution,” and “auto assemblage.” Girls, Autobiography, Media: Gender and Self-Mediation in Digital

Economies. by Maguire, Emma. 2018

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Participated in Asian American Feminist Collective in NYC online 

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Participated in Asian American Feminist Collective in NYC online 

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Movements widely shared on Instagram, Social Media Activism, Clicktivism, Internet Culture Created by Black and Brown Queer Women, Co-optation

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Transmedia Organizing (face-to-face and online activism) - Not about which is better. Not about which is old or new. How to use tools strategically and understand its possibilities & consequences. - Academicizing imaged-based activism - (Ateha Bailey - Learned about VR discourse as empathy and meditative tool - Body Data) - GAPS IN THE METAVERSE -DRANK A MODELO WITH Favianna Rodriguez - Fell in love with cultural work

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For summer 2018, as a C3 Fellow for UC Berkeley's Digital Humanities Department, I conducted graduate-level research to understand the debates of social media powered activism (also known as clicktivism). I utilized Max QDA to collect and code Instagram (an image-based platform) data which is less frequently studied compared to predominately text-based platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Below shows a snapshot of my research as presented for the fourth C3 Summit at Middlebury College.

​​​​​​​Research Question:

How do #Immigrad college graduation caps on Instagram seem to function as a counter-narrative to the anti-immigration sentiments of the Trump Era?

This paper addresses the phenomenon of #Immigrad contributing to a cultural shift in the form of decorated mortarboards, photos, or personal narratives. Last year, non-profit organizations created the hashtag to invite undocumented youths to share their story in which stresses graduating as an experience symbolic of their American citizenship. I specifically examine the function of #Immigrad mortarboards on Instagram as a possible counter narrative to the anti-immigration sentiments of the Trump Era. Through the concept of Zimmerman (2016) transmedia testimonio and image-based activism literature, I review 100 #Immigrad mortar boards on Instagram to demonstrate that the keywords and themes represent undocumented youth building a collective identity and engaging in a historically exclusive political space. The mortar boards are brought into the broader framework of Costanza-Chock (2014) transmedia organizing by linking political and cultural events of the Immigrant Rights Movement. By doing so, I argue that the undocumented youth are adapting to the political environment with innovative transmedia strategies in order to achieve social change.

The grassroots and innovative media strategies of the Immigrant Rights Movement are brought to the forefront through my examination of #Immigrad mortarboards on Instagram as a counter-narrative to the anti-immigration sentiments of the Trump Administration. I explore personalized mortarboards hashtagged with Immigrad on Instagram because the movement has used an image-based platform with limited features to build solidarity, create a collective identity, and engage in a political sphere controlled by and made for elites. I hypothesize that an image-based platform is a movement tool to achieve social change because online visual communication and face-to-face activism interweave together. To test this, I use MAXQDA, a qualitative data analysis software, to code 90 #Immigrant motarboards on Instagram for a relationship between the symbols and text on the post and on-the-ground movement actions such as storytelling. My research is grounded and guided by image-based activism literature and Sasha Costanza-Chock's transmedia organizing framework.

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For summer 2018, as a C3 Fellow for UC Berkeley's Digital Humanities Department, I conducted graduate-level research to understand the debates of social media powered activism (also known as clicktivism). I utilized Max QDA to collect and code Instagram (an image-based platform) data which is less frequently studied compared to predominately text-based platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

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Youth-Led Social Movement Class at Reed College

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Youth-Led Social Movement Class at Reed College

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Exposed to DREAMers

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Strategic content curating, hashtags, algorithms, mini worlds, movements

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Blogging transitioned to Decorating your Blogging Site! Play with HTML. Add a music player. Make GIFs.